Scripting on The IT Hollow

AWS PowerShell Console with XAML

Tue, 29 Nov 2016 15:05:49 +0000

I’ve always liked the idea of taking a series of Microsoft PowerShell scripts and putting them behind a user interface so that I can give the tool to other users. I’m not sure why this idea appeals to me, but probably because it makes me feel like a programmer, if only for a little while. I came across this post by Stephen Owen and I had to try it out.

The project that I picked for this was based on the AWS PowerShell tools that I hadn’t used yet. Let’s face it, this is a good way to check out two different things, I didn’t have much experience with: The AWS PowerShell Tools and XAML for creating GUIs.

Install PowerShell on Mac

Mon, 22 Aug 2016 14:10:58 +0000

It’s a weird thing to say, but we can install PowerShell on Mac after the announcement from Microsoft that PowerShell will be available for both Macintosh and Linux. It’s pretty easy to accomplish but having a great scripting language like PowerShell available for Mac is really cool and deserves a blog post. I mean, now I don’t even need to fire up my Windows virtual machine just to run PowerShell!

To get started, download the OSX .pkg file from the github page: https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/releases/

Get Started with Azure PowerShell

Mon, 15 Aug 2016 14:35:02 +0000

Microsoft Azure has its own command line that can be used to script installs, export and import configurations and query your portal for information. Being a Microsoft solution, this command line is accessed through PowerShell.

Install Azure PowerShell

Using PowerShell with Microsoft Azure is pretty simple to get up and going. The first step to getting started is to install the Azure PowerShell modules. Open up your PowerShell console and run both “Install-Module AzureRM” and then “Install-Module Azure”.

Get VMtools with PowerCLI 5.5 R2

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:01:45 +0000

VMtools is one of those nagging little pieces of software that always seems to be a pain to update. Back in my System Administration days, I commonly needed to report on which VMs had different versions of VMtools, and I have to admit, this was a more difficult property to find from my PowerCLI toolkit.

Take a look at the old way of finding my VMtools versions through PowerCLI.